What if I told you that in a country not much larger than Indiana, you could vote in a national election where your ballot didn’t force you to choose just one imperfect candidate? Where campaigns cost $50K instead of $500 million? Where politicians knock on your door more often than they show up on CNN? And what if I told you that this system has been working just fine—for over 100 years?
That’s not a political utopia. That’s Ireland.
In my latest Nerds for Humanity livestream, I had the chance to talk with Alana Rush, an American-Irish dual citizen now living in Dublin. Alana is one of the few Americans who has both a deep understanding of ranked choice voting (RCV) and the rare experience of watching it operate at the national level in a functioning democracy. Our conversation turned into a sobering and often jaw-dropping look at how different things could be—if America had the courage to reform how we vote, how we campaign, and how we govern.
This post will walk you through Alana’s observations and insights, along with my reflections on what it means for us here in the United States. Spoiler: it’s not all roses across the Atlantic, but there’s a lot to learn.
A Voter’s Menu, Not a Single Option
Before she moved to Ireland, Alana admits she didn’t understand much about how the Irish political system worked. “It’s nearly embarrassing given that I have citizenship here,” she laughed. But after five years of living in Dublin and getting involved in politics—including campaigning in a general election—she now sees what the U.S. is missing.
Ireland uses a system called proportional ranked choice voting. Each constituency (analogous to a congressional district) elects multiple representatives—typically 3 to 5—using RCV. Instead of choosing just one candidate, voters rank their preferences.
This seemingly simple change has powerful consequences.
“When I went into the ballot box for the first time, there were candidates from nine different parties,” Alana explained. “It wasn’t just binary Democrat vs. Republican. There were shades of left, right, and center. It felt like I could vote for someone who actually aligned with me, rather than just the lesser of two evils.”
This multi-representative, ranked choice system protects minority voices and prevents the all-or-nothing dynamics we’ve come to expect in U.S. elections. Because voters can express multiple preferences, it discourages vote-splitting and strategic voting. It encourages coalition-building and reduces the pressure to cast a so-called “wasted vote.”
And perhaps most importantly, it changes the tone of campaigns.
Campaigns Without Character Assassination
In Ireland, attacking your opponent doesn’t win you votes—it can actually lose them. Because second- and third-preference votes matter so much in RCV, candidates have a direct incentive not to alienate voters who already favor someone else.
“We’d knock on someone’s door, and they’d say, ‘I’m voting for Candidate X,’” Alana told me. “Even if that candidate was the opposite end of the spectrum from our campaign, we’d say, ‘Great—what issues matter most to you?’ Then we’d try to earn their second preference.”
This nuance-rich campaigning is reinforced by Ireland’s strict campaign finance laws. Campaigns are limited to spending about $40,000 to $50,000 total. There are no TV ads. No Super PACs. No billionaires bankrolling disinformation blitzes.
“You can’t really buy your way in here,” Alana said. “If you’re not knocking on doors, you’re not winning votes.”
Let that sink in: in Ireland, all politicians, including the equivalent of their Prime Minister, go door-to-door. Voters expect it. “I’ve seen voters put Post-it notes on their door with questions for candidates,” she told me. “People are engaged because they know their voice matters.”
As an American who’s worked on primary campaigns in New Hampshire, I found this retail politics culture deeply familiar—and inspiring. But in Ireland, it’s not just for presidential primaries every four years. It’s baked into every election.
The result? A culture where politicians are more accountable, more accessible, and more focused on policy than on personality cults.
From Pendulums to Coalitions
We’ve all seen the swing: red wave, blue wave, repeal, reverse, gridlock, repeat. America’s political pendulum is whiplash-inducing. Every few years, the country veers dramatically in one direction, only to lurch back again—undoing reforms, re-litigating the past, and paralyzing progress.
Not so in Ireland.
Because the government is typically made up of a coalition of multiple parties, wild ideological swings are rare. “There’s always an opposition, and they play an important role,” Alana said. “But because you need coalitions to govern, parties are incentivized to work together.”
That doesn't mean Ireland has no conflict or partisanship—of course it does. But there's a structural restraint on extremism that America sorely lacks.
“It’s harder to go hardcore in one fringe direction,” Alana said. “And there’s more room for people to actually represent what their communities care about.”
No Big Donors, No Billionaires, No Problem
This was one of the most shocking parts of the conversation.
Candidates in Ireland can’t spend more than around $50K on a campaign. Individuals can donate a maximum of around $15. There are no Super PACs. No shadowy dark money groups. No endless email fundraising spam.
And yet, elections still happen. Politicians still campaign. People still vote.
This upends everything we’ve been told is “necessary” for modern democracy in America. The endless campaign season? In Ireland, campaigns legally last only three to five weeks. Fundraising marathons? They don’t exist.
I mentioned, “Congressional representatives in the U.S. spend 20 to 30% of their time fundraising.” Alana observed, “Here, politicians spend that time knocking on doors.”
But Does It Work at Scale?
Critics of RCV often argue that it’s too complicated, too slow, or too confusing to be implemented at scale. But Ireland—a nation of over 5 million people—has been using it nationwide since 1922.
“Elections are on a Friday. By Monday, all the senators were elected,” Alana said. “The fastest constituency took about nine hours to count, even with seven or eight rounds of redistributions.”
Votes are counted manually, in public, with observers from all parties watching. It’s not high-tech—but it’s high-trust. Ballots are weighed, reviewed, and publicly tallied. And most importantly, the public has confidence in the outcome.
“It’s not perfect,” Alana acknowledged. “But it expresses more of your voter DNA than just picking one name.”
Why Americans Fear RCV—and Why They Shouldn’t
Some Americans worry that RCV will confuse voters, especially those with less formal education or exposure to the process. Alana rejects that idea.
“We make ranked choices all the time in everyday life,” she said. “Once you explain it to someone once or twice, they get it. And if you don’t want to rank everyone, you don’t have to. Just rank your favorite and stop there.”
The idea that voters are too ignorant to handle RCV feels more like elite paternalism than a legitimate critique. And it conveniently preserves a broken system that benefits the two dominant parties.
What the Irish Think of Us
As our conversation shifted to foreign policy and America’s global standing, things got… heavier.
“I get a lot of sympathy and people asking, ‘What’s happening over there?’” Alana said. “There’s concern about global geopolitical stability. But also fear.”
She described Irish neighbors who once dreamed of visiting New York, now saying they’ll wait a few years until things calm down. Some even wipe their phones or travel with burner phones when visiting the U.S.—just in case.
Let that sink in. We’ve become the country that people are afraid to visit.
On Gaza, Ireland is staunchly pro-Palestinian. “There are historical parallels here,” Alana explained. “Because of our experience with British colonization, there’s a lot of empathy for the Palestinian cause.”
On Ukraine, Ireland has taken in many refugees and expressed full-throated support, though military aid is limited due to the country’s longstanding policy of neutrality.
On Iran, public sentiment leans toward de-escalation. “Ireland is a diplomacy-first country,” Alana said. “We don’t send military into conflicts, so we push for calming the temperature.”
There was one moment that stuck with me. Alana said: “I’ve heard people say, ‘I just won’t be going to the States anytime soon.’ These are people in their 60s, going on vacation, wondering if it’s safe.”
We’re not just losing trust in ourselves—we’re losing the world’s trust in us.
The Nerds Takeaway
Ireland’s democratic system isn’t perfect. No system is. But it offers a tangible counterexample to the dysfunction we’ve normalized in the United States.
What if our representatives had to win a broad base of support, not just the loudest 25% of their primary electorate?
What if campaign donations were capped at $15 and campaign seasons were capped at five weeks?
What if every congressional district had three or four representatives, forcing collaboration and moderation?
What if our votes truly represented the range of our values, rather than forcing binary choices?
None of this is fantasy. It’s just Ireland.
If you’re as tired as I am of the American political roller coaster, I hope this conversation gives you hope. Reform is possible. There are working models. We just need the political will—and enough nerds to make it happen.
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Bye nerds.
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